ACC - Fairy Tale Or Nightmare On Elm Street?

You can ask anybody: Having ACC funding counselling for survivors of sexual abuse has been in the past a blessing for many. Certainly for clients because where can you get counselling if not from a psychotherapist or a counsellor? Public Mental Health services have long waiting lists and don't provide counselling. The cost of private therapy is often way out of reach of survivors. Thanks to ACC many survivors have been able to turn their lives around and recover from the legacies of childhood sexual abuse.

You would think this is it and they lived happy ever after. I am sorry to have to disappoint you. The clock stroke midnight and the carriage turned into a pumpkin. Humour me and come with me on a little trip:

1. You have been sexually abused at some point in your life and after struggling with depression, anxiety, flashbacks, or relationship problems, you decide to do something about it and go to see a counsellor. You give the counsellor a brief idea why you are coming and he/she fills out a claim lodgement form. New from September onwards is that for your claim to be considered you will have to give the counsellor much more of your abuse history so that he/she can lodge your claim with giving a preliminary diagnosis. Some people have no problem with that, others find it extremely retraumatising to reveal so much of their sensitive past to a person they have only met 30 minutes ago. 
   
   
2. In the past your counsellor had up to 4 sessions to establish a relationship with you and slowly gather the needed information. This is going to be different now. ACC will send you to a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist who has 3 sessions to thoroughly assess you and write a cover determination report. It has to be a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist because without any doubt, counsellors and psychotherapists are good enough to treat you, but, you may not know that yet, they are too dumb to make an assessment. 
   
3. ACC will now look at this report. If you have been unwell enough for the psychologist/psychiatrist to give you a DSM-IV diagnosis of severe mental illness, your claim will be approved. In the past you would be approved for counselling if you had problems and struggled with normal daily functioning. This is no longer enough. Just because you had experienced sexual abuse and may have difficulty in your relationship does no longer warrant cover - unless your problems are severe enough for a diagnosis of severe mental illness.
   
   
4.  After having studied the psychologist's report ACC will now go and suggest a few suitable therapists for providing treatment from which you can chose. It will never be the person you saw for 3 hours for the assessment, it may be the person you saw in the first place, but it may also not be. ACC is determined that you don't have the same person for treatment and for assessment because having the same person for treatment can be a conflict of interest and the person could be tempted to lie in their report to feather their own nest. Yes, you can't be careful enough!
   
   
5. In the past progress reports were due every 20 hours. From now on progress reports will be required monthly ( if therapy is once a week, reports are due after 3 sessions)
   
6. But don't worry about that. You won't have to go through the drama of doing reports all the time for too long. From now on you will only be granted 16 sessions. When these sessions are up you have to go to the assessor from the beginning again. S/he will review your progress and has three options available:
   
   • grant you up to 3 more sessions to complete therapy
   • initiate a psychiatric assessment for a referral to public mental health services
   • or if you are not well enough to finish therapy and not bad enough to get into mental health, you may have up to 10 focused intensive sessions by clinical psychologist who then will discharge you. If happens,you can count yourself lucky ... you finally meet a person who knows what he/she is doing and can clean up the mess your counsellor was unable to fix.

Well, this is the story. Unless someone is able to convince ACC that the whole thing is ridiculous, there will be no such thing as recovery from sexual abuse unless you've won lotto. What started out like a fairy tale turned into Nightmare on Elm Street!